The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard [free ebooks for android TXT] 📗

in the lower reaches of the glacier! One can feel the averages running through his brain: so many miles today: so many more tomorrow. When shall we come to an end of this pressure? Can we go straight or must we go more west? And then the great undulating waves with troughs eight miles wide, and the buried mountains, causing whirlpools in the ice⁠—how immense, and how annoying. The monotonous march: the necessity to keep the mind concentrated to steer amongst disturbances: the relief of a steady plod when the disturbances cease for a time: then more pressure and more crevasses. Always slog on, slog on. Always a fraction of a mile more.⁠ ⁠… On December 30 he writes, “We have caught up Shackleton’s dates.”249

They made wonderful marches, averaging nearly fifteen statute miles (13 geog.) a day for the whole-day marches until the Second Return Party turned back on January 4. Scott writes on December 26, “It seems astonishing to be disappointed with a march of 15 (statute) miles when I had contemplated doing little more than 10 with full loads.”250

The Last Returning Party came back with the news that Scott must reach the Pole with the greatest ease. This seemed almost a certainty: and yet it was, as we know now, a false impression. Scott’s plans were based on Shackleton’s averages over the same country. The blizzard came and put him badly behind: but despite this he caught Shackleton up. No doubt the general idea then was that Scott was going to have a much easier time than he had expected. We certainly did not realize then, and I do not think Scott himself had any notion of, the price which had been paid.

Of the three teams of four men each which started from the bottom of the Beardmore, Scott’s team was a very long way the strongest: it was the team which, with one addition, went to the Pole. Lieutenant Evans’ team had mostly done a lot of man-hauling already: it was hungry and I think a bit stale. Bowers’ team was fresh and managed to keep up for the most part, but it was very done at the end of the day. Scott’s own team went along with comparative ease. From the top of the glacier two teams went on during the last fortnight of which we have been speaking. The first of them was Scott’s unit complete, just as it had pulled up the glacier. The second team consisted, I believe, of the men whom Scott considered to be the strongest; two from Evans’ team, and two from Bowers’. All Scott’s team were fresh to the extent that they had done no man-hauling until we started up the glacier. But two of the other team, Lieutenant Evans and Lashly, had been man-hauling since the breakdown of the second motor on November 1. They had man-hauled four hundred statute miles farther than the rest. Indeed Lashly’s man-hauling journey from Corner Camp to beyond 87° 2′ S., and back, is one of the great feats of polar travelling.

Surely and not very slowly, Scott’s team began to wear down the other team. They were going easily when the others were making heavy weather and were sometimes far behind. During the fortnight they rose, according to the corrected observations, from 7,151 feet (Upper Glacier Depot) to 9,392 feet above sea level (Three Degree Depot). The rarefied air of the Plateau with its cold winds and lower temperatures, just now about −10° to −12° at night and −3° during the day, were having their effect on the second team, as well as the forced marches. This is quite clear from Scott’s diary, and from the other diaries also. What did not appear until after the Last Returning Party had turned homewards was that the first team was getting worn out too. This team which had gone so strong up the glacier, which had done those amazingly good marches on the plateau, broke up unexpectedly and in some respects rapidly from the 88th parallel onwards.

Seaman Evans was the first man to crack. He was the heaviest, largest, most muscular man we had, and that was probably one of the main reasons: for his allowance of food was the same as the others. But one mishap which contributed to his collapse seems to have happened during this first fortnight on the plateau. On December 31 the 12-feet sledges were turned into 10-feet ones by stripping off the old scratched runners which had come up the glacier and shipping new 10-feet ones which had been brought for the purpose. This job was done by the seamen, and Evans appears to have had some accident to his hand, which is mentioned several times afterwards.

Meanwhile Scott had to decide whom he was going to take on with him to the Pole⁠—for it was becoming clear that in all probability he would reach the Pole: “What castles one builds now hopefully that the Pole is ours,” he wrote the day after the supporting party left him. The final advance to the Pole was, according to plan, to have been made by four men. We were organized in four-man units: our rations were made up for four men for a week: our tents held four men: our cookers held four mugs, four pannikins and four spoons. Four days before the Supporting Party turned, Scott ordered the second sledge of four men to depot their ski. It is clear, I suppose, that at this time he meant the Polar Party to consist of four men. I think there can be no doubt that he meant one of those men to be himself: “for your own ear also, I am exceedingly fit and can go with the best of them,” he wrote from the top of the glacier.251

He changed his mind and went forward a party of five: Scott, Wilson, Bowers, Oates and Seaman Evans. I am sure he wished to